At The Movies: The Last Showgirl is a skimpy affair, Looney Tunes movie proves old is gold

The Last Showgirl (M18)

88 minutes, opens exclusively at The Projector on March 13
★★★☆☆

The story: Pamela Anderson headlines this American indie as a seasoned showgirl confronting an uncertain future when her burlesque – the last of its kind on the Las Vegas Strip – closes after a 30-year run.

Canadian starlet Anderson was, during the 1990s, famously a Playboy magazine centrefold and the bombshell of television’s Baywatch (1992 to 1997).

Shelly in The Last Showgirl is the actress’ first dramatic feature lead. This ageing dancer has dedicated her life to the obsolete topless revue, abandoning even her daughter (Billie Lourd), whom she yearns belatedly to reconnect with. She finds her worth in the razzle-dazzle of feathers and rhinestones and is now lost.

Dave Bautista plays her smitten stage manager and Jamie Lee Curtis her cocktail waitress best friend. Both these actors bring their own loaded history into an otherwise simple story about second acts in an ageist entertainment industry.

American director Gia Coppola is a Hollywood insider, granddaughter of the legendary Francis Ford, niece of Sofia, and her casting choices are knowing.

Anderson’s central performance, in particular, is honest and vulnerable primarily because it is so much her lived experience. She is earning raves for what they call her “comeback”, when, really, she is like Shelly – a 57-year-old erstwhile sex symbol, endeavouring to reintroduce herself as a legitimate actress.

And this is the one difference between them: Shelly will not move on. She believes, somewhat deludedly, that she is a beautiful artiste preserving the storied tradition of French cabaret.

The grainy 16mm handheld camera repeatedly lingers on her posing wistfully against the sunshine, in carparks and under the city’s neon signs, indulging her sentimental romanticism without the movie getting anywhere.

Hot take: Anderson gives her all, but still, her starring vehicle is a skimpy affair.

The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (PG)

91 minutes, opens on March 13
★★★★☆

The story: Aliens have landed, and Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Eric Bauza) are Earth’s unlikely heroes in the face of an invasion.

The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is the first fully animated theatrical feature in the Warner Bros media franchise after 95 years of classic shorts, dating from the Golden Age of American animation.

Creaky? Just you try keeping up with debut director Peter Browngardt’s creative zeal – he wrote and produced the Looney Tunes Cartoons series (2020 to 2024) – and laugh-a-minute sight gags once a spaceship crashes through the rickety farmhouse Porky and Daffy inherited from their late adoptive father Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore).

The hapless pair take a job at a bubblegum factory to pay for the roof repairs.

While Porky crushes on flavour scientist co-worker Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), Daffy discovers an alien plot that is enslaving mankind with mind-control gum.

Their stints as intergalactic cops in the 1956 short Rocket Squad equip them better than even Looney Tunes’ biggest star, Bugs Bunny, for this 1950s B-movie science-fiction throwback to The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956).

Daffy messes things up anyway, leaving Petunia to help him save not only the world, but also his relationship with Porky.

Bauza’s dual voicing of the reckless egotistical duck and the anxious, stuttering pig is virtuosic. The mismatched buddies’ lifelong bond is the heart of an ever wackier adventure that heads all the way into outer space in vibrant, imaginative 2D animation.

Hot take: Old is truly gold with this legacy cartoon. It has screwball hilarity and deep love for the timeless characters.